My Quilting Journey… Come Walk With Me

It’s been a great week. Last week I promised I would share what pattern I decided to use for all the wonderful cat fabrics I’ve been collecting. I’ll pull back the curtain and reveal what I actually started at this year’s annual “Fun Days” hosted by our Lincoln County Piecemakers Quilt Guild. Before I get to the pattern and book I chose let’s talk about what we did at Fun Days.

It’s always a wonderful time to get away with your quilting sisters and have some dedicated sewing time. Over the years I’ve attended many retreats and enjoyed every one. Fun Days is a bit different from others I previously went to because we go home each evening and offer simple projects people can sign up to do during the two days. For instance I taught a few how to make a jelly roll quilt, pictured above. It’s such a fun and easy quilt and one of those where you don’t have total control of the outcome, which I love. I could actually post more about this in a separate rambling.

During our monthly guild meetings and show and tell when something unique is shown you may hear someone in the audience yell “Fun Days Project”. That means we take note and consider it for one of our projects during our retreat. About two months out we talk to the person who brought in the project and see if they are willing to teach it, find out about copyright and if we’ll need to buy patterns, etc. It goes into a pool and we vote. The projects with the most votes, usually 4 or 5 are offered up during Fun Days and folks can sign up or not. Many of us bring our own projects to work on.

You never know what will happen at Fun Days. I try to be very organized with my fabrics or I can feel very overwhelmed which makes it hard for me to work. I have my system and I also follow Bonnie Hunters scrap savers system with strips and blocks and that’s a whole other article. What I’m trying to lead up to it I “had” two large bins of scraps that just kept hanging on. I had every intention of sorting and getting them into my system. Those two bins have been around 4 years as they were. I’ve gotten pretty good after I finish projects to cut up what’s left into the strips and blocks and get it all put away or if the pieces are big enough they get put back in the fabric drawers or in the FQ boxes. These two just kept haunting me. I hauled them to Fun Days yesterday. The picture below is after the first group already went through the bins. I wasn’t the only one with the idea because someone else brought a box and was able to go home with an empty box. I confess, I brought home two pieces from her box.

As the girls sorted through the scraps talking about the string quilts they were working on they were so excited and saying “you’d think we didn’t have any fabric at home or we’d hadn’t been shopping for fabric in forever”. But when it’s free, it’s even better! The first round put a good dent in the bins but after lunch the second round started. I’d even sent a text to someone who I knew loved scraps but wasn’t there on Saturday, but an hour later she was. I left there last night with maybe two Wal-mart bags of scraps out of those two bins. I have since gone through those and either tossed out our pressed and cut into strips what I could use. What a great feeling to have that gone.

As always at these events we shared great ideas with each other and looked at tools others used and made our shopping lists of things we now think we must have to make our quilting life better. We enjoyed dinner and dessert with each other both nights and won great door prizes. I’m excited that I won a gift certificate from Patches and Stitches another wonderful local shop. Now I have to make plans for a lunch run there.

Back to my promise of showing you the quilt pattern I chose for those cat fabrics. Here is what I have on the design wall:

It’s the pattern “All Boxed In” from the book “String Quilt Revival” I included a copy of the book cover below and a copy of a completed quilt that is in the book. It’s a beautiful quilt. Now imagine it in my colors. If you love string quilts this is a great book to add to your library.

I found this cute fabric at Hooked on Quilting in Fayetteville TN that I would love to use as the border on my quilt but I don’t have enough.

Those who live in my area recommended a shop that more than likely would have it even though it’s from two years ago. I can’t make myself go there but it’s worth a try to e-mail them a picture and see if they have it. I can always buy it over the phone. Technology is amazing isn’t it?

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Comments on: "Pull Back the Curtain" (2)

Okay — I’m dying to know … which shop would most likely have it? You can whisper it to me. LOL! I’m glad you had such a fun weekend!! And I know *exactly* what you mean about rummaging about in someone else’s *free* scrap bin … remember me begging you to pull me away from the one at the show?? LOL!! 🙂